I'll Be Your
by perilouslips
Summary: Ichigo and Uryuu's friendship requires some... new adjustments.


WOO new story. I should probably work on finishing some of those other ones first... WELP.

Sort of expanding on Blanket. It's not necessary to read that one, but I AM a ridiculously brilliant writer, so you're just missing out if you don't. .

Blanket disclaimer (a hurr hurr hurr): story ideas and words are mine, but that's it. I know you're shocked.

* * *

Uryuu leaned back in his chair and touched his nose lightly. It was almost completely healed, thank goodness, but _damn_ Ichigo knew how to throw a punch.

Though why he had responded to a gift with a fist of thanks, Uryuu couldn't rightly say. Not that he couldn't think of a few reasons; he'd just given Kurosaki more credit than that.

_More credit than was due, apparently. _Uryuu stared up at his ceiling. Sure, regular boys didn't give presents to other regular boys for no reason, but since when had either of them been regular boys? It's not like Uryuu hadn't made things to give to his friends before, and _those_ things had been clothes, far more intimate an offering than a lousy blanket. And besides, he'd expressly stated that he had only made the blanket to clear his mental slate; how did that transfer into an action meriting such wanton violence? And Kurosaki wondered why people thought he was a punk…

Reasons why blankets might be perceived as more personal than shirts began to float into consciousness, and Uryuu stopped his thought train dead on its track. His eyes narrowed, the only outward sign that he had just shot the conductor of said train in cold blood.

This was not the time to agonize over things like Ichigo's idiocy; he had homework to do. Homework that he had been trying to do for at least two hours. Ridiculous.

His brain seemed to have other ideas, as little sense as that made. His brain ought to have the same ideas he did, logically, but while Uryuu was aiming to finish a six-page paper (current length: one incomplete sentence), the gray matter filling his skull had elected to be generally unhelpful, paying attention to superfluous things like the way the sunset light was coming in his window or how tacky that hat he'd made the other day was.

Though to be honest, he was rather ashamed of himself for actually creating it; even Orihime would find this hat impossible to love.

Uryuu sighed. Just another failure in a long line of failures, all likely caused by the chaos that his last worthy product had generated.

He frowned at the unfortunate hat, sitting complacently on his bedside table. He halfway wanted to burn the stupid thing. The other half of him felt like balancing a pencil on his finger, disregarding thoughts of awful hats and circling back to the mystery that was Ichigo. Because it would follow that if his nerve center were compromised in and of itself, the rest of him would follow its strange and useless impulses.

Because it was quite useless to think deeply about idiots. What was there to think about?

"Agh", Uryuu intoned, letting the acrobat pencil clatter onto his desk. It was time for some tea; it's not like he was getting anything done anyway. So he somehow rallied all parts of his body and, as one, managed to walk to his kitchen, concentrating as fully as he could on simple forward motion.

He'd been feeling so odd lately. Ichigo's reaction shouldn't have bothered him all that much in the long run, but here he was, struggling to boil water.

_Deny, deny, deny._

Uryuu was unable to stop the small jump of his shoulders. He hated it when Common Sense spoke in a different voice from his own. He pulled open a random cabinet, searching for a mug and feeling stupid. He knew where the mugs were. And yet he felt that he needed to move, to act, to distract himself from all the true things he didn't want to admit to, from the flush that crept unwanted up his neck. No one else was around, so there would be no judgment concerning his fumbled cover-up, yet…

The kettle shrilled and Uryuu turned off the stove. Then he let his eyes drift out of focus as he stared out the window. He concentrated and centered his energy; he would not allow any more time for probing thoughts, or for any thoughts not relevant to the paper he needed to write.

Life did not stop and wait for people who couldn't get it together. He closed his eyes, breathed for a moment, then busied himself with tea.

* * *

"Oy." Ichigo plopped down onto the cool tiles of the roof and leaned back against the fence. "What're you eating?"

Ishida continued to silently eat whatever the hell it was that he was eating. Chad, sitting across from both of them and slowly chewing, served as a silent observer to this lack of interaction. Normally, Uryuu would have immediately retorted with something snippy and they could have proceeded into their usual lunch-hour dispute. As it was, Ichigo had to repeat his "Oy!" and nudge the other boy's shoulder, but not as roughly as he normally would have.

Because nothing about this was normal.

Uryuu jerked his shoulder and tossed his hair a bit. "I'm eating food."

"Thanks for the newsflash. _What kind _of food?"

Uryuu blinked down at what was so obviously a ham sandwich, then over at Ichigo, who was flat-out refusing to look at the dark-haired boy's food, if his piercing stare into Uryuu's now paralyzed eyes was any indication. Uryuu was pretty sure his mind was blowing the intensity of this moment out of proportion, but it was difficult to be sure. Normally, his brain would have pointed out that Ichigo was just looking for a fight (like usual), but found itself a bit busy memorizing the different shades of brown in his eyes. Uryuu managed to swallow five times before he realized that his mouth was empty.

...At which point he was able to break eye contact and piece together a bit of his sanity. He shoved his sandwich into his mouth, intentionally taking too large a bite to allow for a moment of re-composure. He could still feel Ichigo's eyes on him, studying him, watching the small twitches of his facial muscles as he schooled himself into a semblance of his usual snobbish dignity.

"If you happened to forget your lunch again, Kurosaki, you'd best go begging elsewhere. I don't cater to morons."

Ichigo snorted. "As if. You wouldn't know good food if it slapped your ass and called you Nancy."

Uryuu was concentrating so much on acting normally that he forgot to act normally. With nothing to bounce off of, Ichigo's snappy remarks faded to vague mumblings along the lines of, "Too damn skinny", and he settled more resolutely against the fence in disappointment. Chad sat, patiently eating, watching the pair of them from underneath his shaggy bangs.

* * *

The day was not overly warm. The lecture was not overly boring. There wasn't much of a reason for why Ichigo was having such difficulty paying attention. The misinformed belief that Ichigo was a miscreant, and thus didn't do well in school, seemed true today. But there was nothing for it. Ishida had been acting strange recently, and it was bugging the hell out of him.

Sure, the other boy had given him a present for no reason, but that same other boy had handled the situation exactly the way Ichigo expected him to, by sneering at Ichigo's reluctance and berating him for acting so demented. Nothing weird there; once a prick, always a prick. That's just the way it worked. That's the way _they_ worked.

But then it _got_ weird. _Uryuu_ got weird. Almost as soon as Ichigo had gotten over his embarrassment, the dark-haired boy had caught it, and worse. And Ichigo had apparently re-contracted some extraneous symptoms, because he'd been feeling all sorts of peculiar around the other boy recently.

Much as his usual nature urged him to confront the situation and deal with it, he was having a hard time finding the right way to broach the subject, which was pissing him off. But honestly, he wasn't sure what the subject was anymore. Irritation would have been an understandable emotion for Uryuu to have towards him; as things were, it would have been extremely welcome, given that the overall mood had tilted into some dimension that neither of them seemed to be comfortable treading.

A loudly cleared throat jerked the strawberry's attention back to the front of the room. The teacher was glaring his direction. Apparently Ichigo's staring out the window was significantly impeding the rest of the class's learning.

After an especially protracted look, his teacher turned back to the board, leaving Ichigo's eyes free to wander once more. They unwittingly wandered in the Quincy's direction. He took note of Ishida's shoulders, posed in a near-perfect rendition of 'Could Care Less', before bringing his eyes to rest on his blank notebook page. He considered the facts once more.

Firstly, the other boy had made him a blanket, like some stupid housewife or something. And then he felt like he had the right to turn up his pointy little nose at Ichigo's response. This was only a small part of the current problem per se, but it was still a problem in Ichigo's book, because this was just not how things worked. If you made a present for someone, you were supposed to be grateful if the person you were giving it to accepted it. And if you happened to be a 16-year-old male giving a goddamn _handmade_ blanket to another 16-year-old male… Uryuu really shouldn't have been surprised to receive a reaction outside the realm of casual gratitude.

When remembering this incident, Ichigo tried to skim over the actual slugging-Uryuu-in-the-face bit, on account of that being a rather immature way of handling things. But what else was he supposed to have done? The whole situation had been too weird to just leave hanging, so he effectively broke that tension. End of story. Besides, _he_ wasn't the one having issues here.

Prodding his thoughts along, Ichigo came upon his next argument, this being the '_clearing my head_' bullshit. As if anyone would buy that... When safely ensconced in his room, the strawberry had taken the time to examine and register the fine quality of his new bedspread; from his own experience, it was difficult to clear the mind by doing anal-retentive things, and Uryuu's sewing was too perfect for him to have avoided thinking all that much about it.

At least in theory. Ichigo didn't know if sewing machines were easy to work or not, so he might be wrong about that one. Still, why not keep the thing? Couldn't Uryuu use extra blankets?

_How could he not? Not an ounce of fat on him, there's no way he can keep himself warm. Asshole. Just goes to show what he thinks of my reasoning ability…_

Ichigo scowled at his desk. Not that any of these claims explained Ichigo's more recent adverse reactions to Uryuu's presence. But that was not the point.

The strawberry sat a bit lower, chewing his lip, and thought over the final argument: the validity of the defense. Ishida obviously thought his motive was convincing (and truthfully he did make a lot of things for people), but there were few reasons for him to give _Ichigo_ anything in terms of their regular interaction, short of the middle finger.

Basically, it all came back to the fact that Ishida was acting strange. Well, for him, that is. Even after all that posturing and cold asshole-ish nonsense, it seemed that Ishida Uryuu was still human.

To the untrained eye, Ishida was normal, albeit much quieter than usual. Even Ichigo might have left his deduction at that had he not noticed the stifled blushes, the attempted nonchalant gazes when Uryuu thought the strawberry wasn't looking, the groping for words if Ichigo's eyes met his… Relatively minor incidents, but devastating for someone trying to keep under strict control. It was a little sad to see the mighty Quincy reduced to a stumbling, anxious teenager, not that he let anyone see.

Aside from Ichigo, obviously, but to be fair, Ichigo wasn't sure Ishida realized how bad he'd been at hiding his emotions recently. Or he really did think Ichigo was dumb as a stump.

Okay, Chad had also clearly noticed Uryuu's strangeness, but he would never say anything about it, so he didn't count.

Ichigo closed his eyes briefly, willing his head not to hurt. Because all of this pointed at one obvious answer. And it involved _feelings_, as distressing as those were for all concerned. But hey, denial was for pussies. How lucky that he wasn't the one chin-deep in it.

The substitute shinigami sighed and sat straighter, returning his gaze to the windows. He wished Uryuu would realize how obvious he was being and get over it_._ Ichigo missed how things used to be. The lack of bickering in his day-to-day life was starting to get to him, and no one else bickered quite like Uryuu. And who said they couldn't bicker anymore anyway? Even if the guy was in love with him, who dictated that they had to act like polite acquaintances when they most certainly weren't?

Acquaintances _or_ polite. Ishida acquired quite the dirty mouth when he got pissed off (which had been happening more often than not up until the blanket fiasco).

Ichigo's thoughts jolted to a halt suddenly. This cranial misfire was indicated only his eyebrows settling deeper than usual into their normally scowled state.

_Love?_

Sure, 'feelings' made sense, but 'love' seemed a rather strong word to be throwing around when the only evidence was moderate weirdness. It was just a crush; Ichigo was strong and irresistible and that's all there was to that. The Quincy would get over it in time, and Ichigo would do his damnedest to accelerate the process.

He spent the rest of class brainstorming ways to approach Uryuu about all this, ways to reset misplaced affections.

He didn't get very far. It hardly mattered, though. It's not like he hadn't survived tougher situations flying by the seat of his pants. Ichigo was nothing if not a master of winging it.

And in a small, quiet place at the very back of his mind, he decided that, if he was being honest, he didn't mind all that much. About the love thing, that is. If he was being honest, there was a slight possibility that he _maybe_ had a teeny little grudging crush on the Quincy himself.

Maybe.

But only if he was being _really_ honest.

* * *

So... yes? No? Velociraptors? I mean, there's more coming regardless, but feedback is always appreciated.


End file.
